Protected
by Felicity G. Silvers
Summary: This isn't how I wanted this to end. You have to believe me. I mean, would you want something that you've had your entire life to end in rain and wet and dark, with blood slithering in the puddles and away from you? Would you want ice to be tearing your heart apart while the rest of you goes numb?


This is a one shot to tide you guys until next week, when I start posting my next longform. I was casting about for something small to write while stuck on the longform and a friend gave me a prompt, and here's this!

Warning: character death

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This isn't how I wanted this to end.

You have to believe me. I mean, would you want something that you've had your entire life to end in rain and wet and dark, with blood slithering in the puddles and away from you? Would you want ice to be tearing your heart apart while the rest of you goes numb?

I tried telling him. Over and over and over. It was bad, it was bad all the way through, but he didn't listen. He really wasn't one to listen in the best of times. Pepper dying wasn't the best of times.

They say we're only as strong as our weakest link.

I'm kneeling down next to him still. Still have him cradled in my lap, but there's nothing I can do. He's gone cold now, brown eyes sightless; he looks a little surprised, and how could he not? He opened himself up to a mad thing, a mad _god_, and I tried to _tell him_—

I pull the knife out, small and private and it's such an intimate way to go. We never thought _him_ intimate.

Well, Thor, maybe. He'd been stabbed before, in the back, in the side, but he just kept going. Keeps going.

We—I—didn't know at first. Just Tony in a bottle after the funeral, mourning. We kept him away, or tried, but he was always throwing himself into his work, always wanted to help when called because he needed something, anything, to give his life structure and meaning again. I understood that, I do it too, everyone does. So we let him. And it helped, really, it did, we kept a closer eye and always came when he called.

I saw the glimmer of curiosity and burning need to know spark when Thor showed up saying Loki escaped. I admit, I was curious too. How, what would we need to do to capture him again, how hard would it be this time? Would New York be left a decimated wasteland afterward again? Would he try to use one of us again, reach in and twist and that stupid _blue light_ that I can't get out of my head?

But Loki didn't show up. He didn't cause mayhem. Nothing. It drove us, me, insane, waiting, constantly waiting, each call wondering if it was Loki and each call it being something else, someone else. But Tony, I knew Tony was looking. He stopped insisting on coming on missions with everyone else if he wasn't needed. I tried to stick around, let him know not to be idiot. I told him about… that time. About what it was like, and I told him it wasn't all roses when he seemed even more interested.

At least the blue eyes are a giveaway, right?

We didn't even know Loki was showing up, talking to Tony while we were away, whispering, telling Tony… I don't know what. Not until Bruce walked in and Loki vanished and Tony threw a fit over people invading his lab without knocking, without _asking_.

We all tried. Told Tony it was a bad idea, told him Loki wasn't going to change just because Tony said so. Even Thor told Tony Loki wouldn't suddenly revert to being a good person, to suddenly regaining sanity because of a mortal—"no offense meant, my friend"—but what can you do? Tony is Tony. Was. Was Tony.

We all found them together, at one time or another. I remember when I did, Loki giving Tony some sob story, Tony looking sympathetic. When Tony looked at me, irritated, angry, I saw that cat grin spread over Loki's face, Tony not able to see, the glimmer of cat-cruelty in those deep green eyes. But it was gone when Tony turned to apologize, Loki just looking sad and sympathetic and I couldn't move. I couldn't tell Tony "Look" or any of that because it was there and gone again.

But how I tried. After that, how I tried to tell him, tried to get him to see Loki was just playing him like a fiddle.

He wouldn't have any of it.

It just went on. Months of Loki not causing trouble in the city, months of Loki whispering in Tony's ear, whispering half-truths and whatever knowledge Tony asked and none of us able to do anything but make Tony angrier, make him push at us, push us away. Until this.

Until rain and wet and them meeting on the roof in the rain, the rest too far away for me to go get. And me, too slow to stop what looked like a kiss before Tony looked startled and grunted, and Loki grinned that cat grin with its cat cruelty and vanished.

He told me I was right, chuckled about it, but his eyes were so hurt, so betrayed. Twice, the world took from him when all he wanted was someone to give order. "You have us," I had told him, over and over, we all did, but we were the sort of thing he wanted. He wanted Pepper. He wanted whatever Loki whispered in his ear. He told me I was right, and it's the worst sort of right.

His head cradled in my lap, his hand in mine, telling him he'd be fine, but he's not an idiot. Wasn't an idiot. The shrapnel never got close, but Loki's knife went true and fast and deep.

This isn't how I wanted it to end.


End file.
